| Students benefit from having opportunities to examine words in purposeful and guided lessons that encourage them to develop their powers of observation an their critical skills of inquiry. (Newlands, 2011) |
It's Monday again and that means its time to continue our study of the great article by Michelle Newlands (2011) called Intentional spelling: Seven steps to eliminate guessing. Each week I will be going over one of the seven steps and providing ideas and activities for you to use in applying that step to your spelling instruction.
Today's step: Observe patterns and trends is all about helping students to make connections about different spelling patterns. For example: if students notice that the last four letters in these two words (light, sight) are the same and sound the same. Then spelling words with similar patterns (night, right, flashlight, tight) becomes much easier.
The following activities can help students recognize patterns between words.
Today's step: Observe patterns and trends is all about helping students to make connections about different spelling patterns. For example: if students notice that the last four letters in these two words (light, sight) are the same and sound the same. Then spelling words with similar patterns (night, right, flashlight, tight) becomes much easier.
The following activities can help students recognize patterns between words.
Spelling Activities
Making Words
Making words is a manipulative activity, originally developed by Patricia Cunningham, where students can learn patterns in words through rearranging a set number of letters and trying to find out the big word that those letters will make. The above video describes the benefits of using a making words lesson. The next video is a lesson that you can use after the making words activity to focus students attention on the patterns in the words.
Word FamiliesWord families are groups of words that have the same ending pattern. There are numerous activities that you can use with word families. A few that I've created are: Nursery Rhyme Themed Word Family Games Give a dog a bone - File folder games Phonics Word Wheels Another site that I love that has tons of free printables for word families is a site called WordWay. When I say tons of stuff I really mean it, this is an excellent site. | Word LaddersWord ladders are a great activity for students to recognize patterns between words. A word ladder starts with a word at the bottom of the ladder. The objective is to change the first word into the second word by changing parts of the original word using clues and directions into new words until you reach the top of the ladder. There are numerous commercial word ladder that you can purchase but I've got a great set of word ladders for first and second grade that you can get for only $3.50. These word ladders are all Pirate themed so they can be more motivating for students to complete.  Click on the link to learn more about these great pirate word ladders. |
Word Sorts
You can also have your students do word sorts to identify spelling patterns. There are two main types of word sorts, open and closed. A closed word sort is when the spelling pattern is already identified and students must sort the word according to those patterns. In an open word sort the student is the one who determines how they want to categorize the words.
Newlands, M. (2011). Intentional spelling: Seven steps to eliminate guessing. The Reading Teacher, 64(7), 531-534.
